FREMONT LAKE — High up on the western flank of the Wind River Range in a pontoon boat at an elevation of 7,400 feet, Bill Dohse is searching for dead bodies encased in old barrels on the stark black bottom of the state's deepest lake.
He’s got top technology, a determined team — and a fat chance.
Dohse, president of the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue (OSAR), is looking for the bodies of Virginia Uden and her two sons — Richard, 11, and Reagan, 10 — who were murdered in 1980 by her ex-husband, Gerald Uden.
Uden claims he put their corpses in barrels and sank them here at Fremont Lake. The problem is he’s claimed a lot of things, and they haven't all added up.
“A lot of people say Uden’s full of BS, and he's just playing games,” said Dohse, a sun-browned man with a buzzcut, looking out on the glassy morning surface of Fremont Lake this past week.
“But our new technology is superior, and I’m hopeful we'll find what we’re after,” he added.
It’s day one of a privately funded mission dubbed Operation Cold Current, the first major search effort for the Uden bodies in more than a decade. Depending who you ask, it may be the biggest fool’s errand in as many years, too.
‘I Think I’ve Got Something Here'
Previous searches produced nothing save major costs and frustrations as dark as the lake itself, which with a maximum depth of 610 feet is known by locals as “The Deep.”
Officials were certain the killer had put them on a goose chase. But Dohse’s intuition has been blaring like a smoke detector that won’t shut off.
Lo and behold, it suddenly looks as though that gut feeling is dead on.
“Guys, I think I’ve got something here,” said Carter Sinclair, the mission’s drone operator, eyeing a blip on the sonar readout coming from a remote operated vehicle (ROV) on the lakebed below. “It’s about the right size. Let’s go take a look.”
There it is, 388 feet deep: a ribbed and rusted oil drum.
Dohse’s face went slack when he saw the image on the ROV’s controller screen.
Short of breath, sounding both amazed and afraid, his response seemed to channel nearly half a century of wondering.
“You're f***ing shitting me,” he said.
Within the hour, members of Sublette County Sheriff’s Office Tip Top Search and Rescue (TTSAR) were racing across the lake.
Just like that, a decades-old missing persons case was shocked back to life.
A team from the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue uses modern techonology to serarch the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels triple-murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 victims. (Bill Doshe Photo) 
Bill Dohse, president of the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue, runs point on Operation Cold Current to search the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 murder victims. (Zakary Sonntag, Cowboy State Daily) 
A team from the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue uses modern techonology to serarch the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels triple-murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 victims. (Zakary Sonntag, Cowboy State Daily) 
John Linn with Sublette County's Tip Top Search and Rescue helps search the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels triple-murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 victims. (Zakary Sonntag, Cowboy State Daily)
What Happened In 1980?
The murders of Virginia, Richard and Reagan went unsolved for more than three decades until investigators finally got the lead they needed in 2013.
Uden, then 71 and living in Missouri, confessed to the killings.
Uden testified that he shot his ex-wife and adopted children in their heads with a rifle on Sept. 12, 1980, at a rural crossroads near Pavilion, Wyoming, where he’d lured them under the pretext of going on a hunting trip.
“Richard was standing beside the tailgate of the station wagon, and I shot him behind the ear,” Uden confessed in court in 2013, adding that he shot 10-year-old Reagan behind the ear as well, Cowboy State Daily previously reported.
"That took approximately 10 seconds. Reagan saw what was happening, and he ran, and he tripped and he fell in the ditch,” he added.
His reasons for the killings were that Virginia and the boys had become a nuisance in his subsequent marriage to Alice Uden, a woman of kindredly morbid regard. Alice was later found guilty for the murder of her previous husband, Ron Holtz, who she’d killed before meeting Uden.
Uden said he concealed the bodies of Virginia and the boys in a nearby mine until postmortem gasses dissipated.
He claims that he then transferred them to barrels, Virginia in a 55-gallon drum and the two boys together in a larger galvanized trash canister. The drums were sealed and punctured with bullet holes to ensure they’d sink in water.
Yet subsequent sonar-based search efforts in 2013 and again in 2014 turned up nothing.
“I thought he was full of shit,” said John Linn, water search team leader at Sublette County TTSAR. “The barrels were definitely not where he said they were.”
Once onboard the OSAR vessel this past week, however, with a live image of a corroded drum before him on the lakebed, Linn is rethinking a lot.
“You’ve really got something, boys,” he said.
Face-to-Face With Triple Murderer
The following day, the TTSAR water search team was back on the lake dragging a towfish sonar in search of additional clues around the area of the drum.
They discovered something, but it wasn’t another barrel.
What they found was the depth of the case’s emotional and psychic hold, as old memories dredged up, like Linn’s one-on-one interaction with Uden in the very vessel where he sat now.
“It was quite an experience to be sitting here across from a triple murderer,” Linn said, describing the excursion in which Uden, under the watch of sheriff deputies, guided TTSAR to the location where he’d dumped the drums.
“I asked him point blank: ‘You've been lying about this for 35 years. Why in the world would we believe you after that length of time?” Linn said. "I know you don't have anything to lose, but why would you tell us where this is now?’”
Uden, wearing a survival suit and sitting close enough they’d have smelled one another's breath, alluded to the sky overheard.
“I got to get right with God,” Uden said to Linn. “And this is the only way I can do it.”
Linn accepted the answer as earnest and set to work scouring the lake.
“There was a time when I would eat, drink and sleep this thing,” he said, explaining that it exacted a toll he didn’t expect.
“It’s physically and emotionally draining, because with every (sonar) pixel that comes in, you're so anxious for something to show up, and after that long you just get numb,” Linn said.
Linn felt certain Uden was lying. He’s less certain now.
“You spend that much time on a search you get attached, in a sense,” he said, eyes glued to a sonar screen mounted on the dash. “Part of the reason I felt so giddy is because I never dreamed they would come back on this search.”
While his excitement is shared by Sublette County law enforcement, officials are urging patience.
“It’s amazing that they went out into a lake this big, this deep, and were able to find a barrel,” said Sublette County Sheriff K.C. Lehr. “But as of right now, it’s still just a barrel.”
Gerald Uden is interrogated about the murders of his ex-wife, step-sons and other murders his wife Alice did. (Screenshot From Oxygen Network) 
Gerald Uden (CSD File) 
A team from the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue serarches the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels triple-murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 victims, ex-wife Virginia and two step-sons — Reagan, 10, left, and Richard, 11, right. (Zakary Sonntag, Cowboy State Daily)
What About The Depth?
One aspect that needs to be reconciled is the depth of the drum.
Uden had told Linn he’d measured the depth of the drop location using a 450-foot rope with a weighted end. He said the weight never touched the bottom, leading to the assumption the drums were likely resting at 450 feet or deeper.
The barrel found by OSAR lies at 388 feet.
OSAR and TTSAP both believe drums of this sort might drift significantly from a drop point. They also point out how 35 years had passed between the time Uden dumped the barrels and the time he told officials in 2013, meaning he may have misremembered details.
“There’s really no reason for a barrel to be out here,” said Dohse. “My gut feeling is that this is the barrel we’re looking for.”
Much of that feeling stems from a recent letter written by Uden in prison, even if there is still reason to question his truthfulness.
John Linn with Sublette County's Tip Top Search and Rescue helps search the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels triple-murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 victims. (Zakary Sonntag, Cowboy State Daily) 
A team from the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue uses modern techonology to serarch the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels triple-murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 victims. (Bill Doshe Photo) 
Bill Dohse, president of the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue, runs point on Operation Cold Current to search the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 murder victims. (Zakary Sonntag, Cowboy State Daily) 
A team from the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue uses modern techonology to serarch the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels triple-murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 victims. (Zakary Sonntag, Cowboy State Daily) 
A team from the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue gets ready to serarch the depths of Fremont Lake for barrels triple-murderer Gerald Uden claims he dumped there containing the bodies of his 1980 victims. (Zakary Sonntag, Cowboy State Daily)
Letters From Prison
In 2023, Uden petitioned the Wyoming Supreme Court to withdraw his three guilty pleas to first-degree murder, claiming his 2013 confession was elicited under duress.
The court denied his petition, but he continued to claim innocence.
Then a private citizen began a correspondence that led to new revelations.
Stacy Koester, founder and president of WyoFind Search, Rescue and Recovery, a Gillette-based missing person organization, contacted Uden in prison through letters and asked for his help finding Virginia and the two boys.
Uden initially denied having a role in their killing or disappearance. But Koester kept pressing, and eventually he admitted to killing them.
He also gave her new information about the location of the bodies in Fremont Lake.
That information made its way to Dohse, who then had long conversations with the OSAR board before committing to a search mission on the organization’s time and dime.
“We put a lot of trust in Stacy and the fact that she had trust in what was in the letters,” said Dohse. “And finally we said, 'Let's do this, let's pull it off, let's do something that hasn't been done before, and then let's try to bring those two kids in.'"
From Discovery To Recovery
OSARs extraction plan for the barrel will rely on a custom underwater recovery rig soon to be developed with partners in Utah.
It will also depend on cooperation from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation and the governor’s office, which are reviewing the group’s incident action plan.
For now, they’re keeping details close to the chest.
“All I can say right now is that it’ll take triple the work, triple the people, triple the equipment, and triple the cost,” Dohse said about actually recovering the barrel they found.
Virginia Uden and her two sons, Richard and Reagan, no longer have living relatives to inherit their remains in the event of their recovery, which raises questions for some about whether an expensive effort is justified.
Koester of WyoFind offers an answer.
“A lot of people ask why it matters to find Virginia and the boys, and I believe every human being has the right to a proper burial, no matter the amount of time,” she said. “Those boys didn’t get to live the life they truly deserved, and their story shouldn’t be buried in the bottom of a lake.”
If they are recovered, there will be a place ready for their remains.
Virginia’s mother, Claire Martin, who died at age 92 in 2013 just months before Uden’s arrest, pre-purchased a gravesite in the Horseshoe Cemetery in Glendo, according to Ron Franscell, author of "Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story.”
For Dohse, the search for and recovery of the barrel is about what such efforts signal to society.
“I think there’s an important message in this,” he said. “The message to not quit, to not give up until you have to, or until there's an answer.”
Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com and Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
